


Old Friends

by Naraht



Series: Samanthaverse AU [4]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Aging, Alternate Reality, F/M, In Retrospect, Infidelity, Martha's Vineyard, Season/Series 03, decades later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:06:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After many years, the Cigarette Smoking Man goes to see Teena Mulder one more time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Friends

**Author's Note:**

> Chronologically, this story replaces the meeting that took place in "Talitha Cumi." It is part of a series of stories set in an alternate universe where Fox Mulder was abducted rather than Samantha, but that fact isn't particularly important to this story. Pretend they're talking about Fox if you like. The previous story in the series is "Dirty Water", but this one stands alone.

Martha's Vineyard in August--it is the same time of year that he always used to visit, escaping the oppressive swamp of Washington D.C. for a few weeks of liberty. In those days he used to take the ferry. Now he looks down at the sun-parched island laid out below the wing of his private jet, and breathes the thin, cool, climate-controlled air. His reflections are fittingly distant, bloodless, analytical.

Yet when he steps out onto the heat-shimmering tarmac of the airport, all of the feeling comes rushing back. The smell of salt air carried on a salt breeze; the chirp of crickets and the whir of cicadas in the long straw-pale grass at the edge of the runway; the faint cries of the gulls wheeling overhead.

He declines the offer of a taxi, determined to walk the five miles to Chilmark. The roadside is lined with marsh roses, just finished blooming, and with bending, dusty wildflowers. He used to roam all over the island with Bill, back in time for a late dinner laid out on the deck, and vanilla ice cream for dessert. Always homemade. Now the sun is hot, and he expects no welcome to be prepared for this unexpected visitor. He loosens his tie. He carefully takes off his jacket and folds it over one arm. He walks on, listening to the roar of the incorruptible sea.

By the time that he comes to Chilmark the sun is sinking slowly, casting his shadow ahead of him on the road. The evening is golden over the ocean as he turns, footsore, onto Teena's leafy street. Very little has changed here since the sixties; somehow the street has been spared the blight of development. But the Cape Cod house seems smaller than he remembered. The curtains in the dormer windows upstairs are pulled shut. And the crabapple tree that he and Bill planted one afternoon, while the children rode their bikes up and down the sidewalk, has grown up into the power lines.

He doesn't knock on the front door. Instead he goes around into the still-sunlit backyard, sparing only a glance for the distant view of the ocean over the stone wall. Teena is there, watering her hanging baskets. She holds the watering can up to the dark purple flowers; her hair is silver against them, falling to her chin in gentle waves. Twenty summers have passed since he was last on the Vineyard, and here she is still. Once he thought of this house as his own. Once he spent more time here than Bill.

Intent on her task, she bends to put the watering can down and begins to prune the flowers, picking off the dead blooms with fingers grown stiff with arthritis. She is wearing a simple skirt and sandals; his shadow falls across her bare calves, but she doesn't notice.

Finally he clears his throat, steps closer. Teena whirls around and puts a hand to her heart. The faded flowers scatter across the dry grass.

"I--you startled me," she says, and laughs nervously. "Charles, can it be you?"

Unable to find the words, he takes a cigarette from his jacket pocket and lights it.

"What are you doing here after all this time? What can you possibly want?"

He takes a deep, steady drag from the cigarette, a reassuring universal that erases the scent of the flowers and the roar of the sea in his ears.

"Do I always have to want something, Teena?"

"Is there something wrong, then? Is it Samantha, or is it--is it about Fox?"

"Nothing like that, I assure you. Nothing so sinister. Can't a man simply want to discuss the past with an old friend?"

"But after all these years," she says, bewildered. "Why? Why now? What can you possibly want to discuss? You never discussed anything with me in the old days, you or Bill--not until the end. Why now, Charles?"

Her voice is rising in pitch, a reminder of those final panicked days when the project chose to exact its price. Bargains, tears, and sacrifices. Lesser men have crumbled since then. Bill Mulder broke. Teena stood firm.

"Why not?" he says simply. "It's been years. Water under the bridge."

She watches him, her arms crossed across her chest, and he inhales once more. Carefully. Then he lowers hand and cigarette to his side, flicking a little ash away.

"I do think you might offer me some refreshment, Teena. I've travelled a long way to see you, and walked from West Tisbury in the heat of the day."

"Oh," she says. "Of course. I'm sorry. Would you like some lemonade, or iced tea...?"

Even now he can count on Teena Mulder's impeccable instincts as a hostess, and the thought makes him smile. "Iced tea, please."

She turns to go inside and he begins to follow her, but she puts an arm across the door frame. "I'll bring it out to you," she says firmly.

The iced tea, placed on the picnic table in a glass pitcher, is homemade. Plenty of ice, slices of lemon, sprigs of mint that are clearly cut from her garden. House proud. She always was, and yet over the years he has heard differently of her from other colleagues of Bill. Obviously they were wrong.

He returns from where he was wandering and takes a seat in one of the wrought-iron chairs--just as uncomfortable as it looks, despite the floral cushion.

"I was just admiring your herbaceous borders," he says awkwardly.

"I have more time now to devote to my gardening," she replies.

Silence. Casting about for a ashtray, he finds none. He stubs his cigarette out against the side of the chair and resolves--for the moment at least--not to light another.

"Charles," she says, more gently, "why *are* you here? You can't have come all the way from Washington just for a glass of iced tea."

"If I had been at liberty to do so, I would have travelled around the world for the privilege of being served a glass of your iced tea."

Gallantry. It isn't true, of course, but he is intrigued to discover that she still inspires this in him. A thin smile, mostly disapproving, is Teena's only response, her lips drawing together in a way that is less flattering to a woman in her early sixties.

"You know that's not true."

"I know that I wish it were," he replies, equally gently. "And in the end that's what really matters, isn't it?"

She sighs. "Charles, you are as elliptical as ever."

"You would be disappointed in me otherwise."

Teena leans back in her chair, relaxing her ramrod-straight bearing. Together, in silence, they look at the pine trees lining the north side of the house, and at the ocean beyond. He pours himself another glass of iced tea. He glances only once at his watch, reflects that he has been here for half an hour without Teena Mulder slapping him, something which he had considered a distinct possibility.

The sun sinks. The air is close and he can feel the pinpoint itch of mosquitos settling on his skin. He lights another cigarette, exhaling the smoke slowly.

"Are you still here?" asks Teena, her tone almost amused.

"Perhaps it's time we moved indoors," he replies.

And she gets to her feet with--he notes--a twinge of pain, gathering the pitcher and the two glasses.

"You can't stay," she says, brushing a leaf fragment off the side of a condensation-bedewed glass. "Samantha is arriving for a visit tomorrow."

He is charmed. "Teena, who said anything about staying?"

She glances up at him. Then, ignoring his gaze, she moves towards the house, parting the waters.

"Can I help you with those?"

"I can manage," she says.

The watering can lies abandoned by the side of the house. He bends to collect it and follows her in.

***

It is a pale echo of the dinners that once took place here. Once it was Bill and Teena, Fox and Samantha, with himself as the supplicant guest. Now it is just the two of them sitting alone at a table that could seat eight, linen napkins unfolded on their laps. He could imagine himself the man of the house now. He could imagine himself Bill Mulder, who betrayed her.

Her hospitality is impeccable and correct rather than warm; he cannot help but feel that she is showing her anger in the only way she can. Yet clearly she is willing to listen or he would not be here, taking another helping of baby carrots from the Mulder family china.

"I want to protect Samantha," he begins, as it becomes clear that dinner is drawing to a close. "That was my parting promise to you, and I've kept it. But recently she has been digging more and more deeply into some very sensitive matters. As she does so it becomes ever more difficult for me to shield her from unwanted attention."

"She tells me almost nothing about her work," says Teena. As he looks at her he can see the worry lining her face, even by the low light of the chandelier. "I don't involve myself in it."

"As you didn't involve yourself in Bill's work. But it reached you anyway, and it can reach you again. We never truly leave these things behind us, Teena."

"I've repressed it all."

"But your daughter hasn't."

She looks down, says nothing. He continues.

"Not remembering is a luxury. One which we can't afford now. Things are in motion."

"Things are in motion? You have no idea, Charles. To come here and tell me that, after what you and Bill inflicted on me. To expect me to discuss this calmly with you over dinner, as if I didn't lose my son to your project."

"I lost my wife. You forget that."

"You got her back," Teena spits.

"But did I, Teena? Did I really? And would you have really welcomed Fox back to a lifetime of institutionalization? All that promise, gone? In the end his fate was a kinder one."

"You can say that," she says. "You weren't his mother."

And she covers her face with her hands.

When she looks up again, her face is composed but her eyes are bright with tears. "I'll ask you again: why now? After so many years?"

"As I said before, matters have reached a crux. When I promised my protection for Samantha, I never dreamt that she would become so involved or come so close to the truth."

"None of us could have predicted that."

"In pursuing her brother, she's uncovered information that endangers her. It also puts you, and myself, and your ex-husband at risk of being implicated for our collusion with what was done in the name of the project. She would expose it all if she could. And men don't become less culpable for their crimes after a long lapse of time."

No one should know that better than Teena. He remembers the evening in this very room when she served dinner to Victor Klemper. A Nazi doctor brought by circumstance to a macabre belief in the equality of man.She was faultlessly polite, just as a young wife should have been to one of her husband's senior colleagues. She was strung so tightly that he thought she might snap, and yet all that she showed to Klemper was her gracious smile.

At the time he had thought Victor's unease to be a sign of his guilt. And now he knows exactly why the man was so haunted. Not by the past, but by the future which was so rapidly approaching. That was in 1972.

"We had no choice," she says faintly.

"No one knows that better than I, Teena. And no one has done more to preserve the fiction that you, in particular, made no choice. While she may have believed it once, I can assure you that she doesn't believe it any longer."

Stunned, she stares at him. Finally he has touched her personally.

"Samantha needs guidance," he continues. He has chosen to take the tone of a benevolent uncle--knowing, as Teena does, that he is far more than that. "I had hoped that she could be persuaded to abandon the X-Files, or that her career at the FBI could be brought to an honorable close. When that failed I spoke to her myself, outlining the dangers in the path she had chosen. She chose to ignore my warning. And now I can only trust to the guidance of a mother."

She laughs, a slight, bitter sound. "You show so much confidence in me, Charles, to think that Samantha would listen to me now. I raised her alone, you know. I listened to her psychologist every week, telling me that the children of broken homes never really recover. I re-mortaged this house to send her to St. Paul's, because I thought that it was the best thing for her. And then at seventeen she left for England and became her own woman. Do you think that I would have chosen this life for her if I had had any influence? No mother would want this for her daughter."

"You have more power than you believe, Teena. You always have."

"So you always say."

"It's true."

After considering this, Teena lays her knife and fork down on the plate, considering them in turn. She breathes out briefly, then looks up again.

"Will you stay for coffee?"

"Of course," he says, inclining his head to her.

"I'll bring it through."

Dismissed, he moves into the living room, leaving Teena to clear the dishes and compose herself once more. He remembers those days when he and Bill would smoke on the porch after dinner while Teena did the dishes. Once or twice he found some excuse to follow her through, bringing a glass or a dessert plate that had been left behind. She was there at the sink in her apron, yellow gloves and blisteringly hot water, and the damp traces on her face were not always from the steam. Was that when she was pregnant with Samantha? Yes, he remembers putting a hand to the side of her taut belly, the way that she stood awkwardly back from the sink. Then he brushed a strand of her dark hair behind one ear and smiled at her before he heard Bill's voice calling to him from outside. Such small things, so clearly remembered decades later.

The living room is brightly lit and empty. All of the windows are open, their sheer curtains fluttering in the cool night air. He wanders the room, feeling like an intruder, allowing small details to catch his eye. The white-painted mantelpiece is lined with shells and smooth stones combed from the beaches of the Vineyard. No pictures of grandchildren.

A creak of the floorboards, and he turns to find Teena standing in the doorway holding two cups of coffee. She is smiling. He puts down the small conch shell that he had been examining.

They sit side by side on the couch, drinking their coffee and talking of small things.

"For ten years now I've been on the board of the local library," says Teena thoughtfully, in response to his questions piecing together the story of a life that, so far as he knew, had ended in 1973. "And the Rotary for the past five." She smiles ironically. "The social stigma of being a divorcee is not what it once was."

"I'm surprised that you haven't remarried."

"I had Samantha to think of. And then--I suppose I got used to having my independence. My time is my own now, and I manage to keep it occupied."

"I don't doubt it."

"What about you?" she asks, an edge in her voice. "You've been listening to me talk all this time, and you've said nothing about yourself."

"There's very little to tell. I wouldn't want to bore you."

"So nothing has changed, then."

"Nothing has changed." He pauses, thinks of something he could mention. "I hear that Jeffrey is at the University of Maryland, pursuing a Masters' degree in Criminal Science."

She nods politely, asking nothing more about his estranged son. Neither does she mention Cassandra, and he is just as glad. The grandfather clock by the hallway ticks out its rhythm.

"You'll be interested to know," he offers, "that I've taken up gardening in my old age."

"You're hardly an old man," she says, amused, relieved.

"My young colleagues would say otherwise."

"Your young colleagues are wrong. Though I can't say I ever thought of you as having a green thumb."

He lays his hand open for her inspection, palm upwards. A strong hand, but graven deeply with lines and stained with nicotine. For a moment he thinks that she will lay her own in it. But the moment passes, and her hand stays resting on her knee. She still wears her wedding ring and diamond solitaire, and perhaps it is of necessity now, too small to be eased over slightly swollen joints.

She is waiting for his response.

"I don't think I do," he admits. "But plants are more forgiving than human beings."

He expects reproach from her, but instead what he sees in her eyes is sympathy. "You're right," she says softly. "They are."

And she reaches out and squeezes his hand. Then she looks away, embarrassed. The grandfather clock ticks on, a Mulder family heirloom secure and upright in its case of dark oak, and this time she spares it her attention.

"Oh, it's getting late," she says in a masterful tone of insincere surprise that, at ten o'clock on a Friday evening, would sound absurd on the lips of anyone other than Teena Mulder. "Where will you be staying?"

"I don't have reservations. I made the trip up with very little notice. But I'm sure that I'll find somewhere to lay my head."

"In August?" She laughs. "Charles, admit it: you were planning to stay here all along."

Getting to her feet, she goes to linger by the clock. Yet her air, or so he flatters himself, is simply one of uncertainty rather than that of a hostess seeking to speed her departing guest to the door.

"So you keep telling me," he says.

"And if it weren't for the fact that Samantha is arriving tomorrow morning, I'm sure that I would..."

"My flight leaves at eight a.m. I assume that she's driving up from Washington?" Caught off-balance, Teena nods. "I would defy her to arrive earlier than noon. You'll even have time to do the dishes."

Silence.

"Teena," he says, "Samantha isn't here. More to the point, Bill isn't here, and you have no need to listen for the key in the lock. The house belongs to you now. It's your choice."

"I'll go and make up the guest room," she says.

***

On first going up to bed he waits for a while, idly reading a few pages of a John le Carre from a small shelf of paperback novels. The guest room is small and pristine, smelling faintly of lavender and clean sheets, and Teena has laid out neatly folded towels on the bed for him. Only a visitor of long standing would know that she has put him in the room which once belonged to Fox.

Finally he sets the book aside and goes out into the hallway. He navigates by the print of the wallpaper and the reflected moonlight coming through the window at the end of the hall, unwilling to turn the light on. Just as he passes Teena's door, it opens.

He recoils slightly. "I'm sorry," he says, gesturing across the hall towards the bathroom. "I was just..."

"So was I."

She is wearing a long white nightgown with a high neckline, like something out of another age. It has a gathered bodice and his eyes drift to her breasts, full and heavy under the cotton. Her silver hair is loose in waves around her face.

An awkward dance in the hallway, witnessed only by two. He steps back as she steps forward. Barefoot on the carpet, he is pajama-less, dressed only in his undershirt and boxer shorts and suddenly self-conscious. She looks up at him.

"Please," he says, gesturing again. "I'm in no hurry."

So with a whisper she brushes past him and the door to the bathroom closes. He stands in the hallway as a few moments pass, listening to the sound of running water from within. Then he goes back to his room and curses himself for a fool.

Despite the coolness of the night air, it is still warm and close up under the eaves. He stands at the dormer window with the lights out, looking out to sea and smoking thoughtfully.

***

When he wakes in the middle of the night, the air has turned chilly. He closes the window and smokes a cigarette lying in bed, but it leaves him no warmer and no closer to sleep. On the shelf in the closet he finds a spare blanket, just where Teena told him it would be. It is an old Hudson Bay Company blanket: thick, scratchy wool, just a little moth-eaten in places. It has probably been in the house longer than he has been visiting. He places it on the bed, still folded.

Pulling on his wrinkled dress shirt, he steps into the hallway. It is quiet. There is no light under her door. Teena has long since gone to sleep. He makes his way down to the kitchen, where he stands and drinks a glass of water, the tile cold against his feet. He misses the roar of traffic outside his cramped apartment in Washington. It has been years since he's spent the night so close to anyone, let alone anyone for whom he cares. He thinks that he can hear her breathing.

He wonders whether Teena kept any of Bill's things after the divorce, whether there are any records of the project here, crumbling to dust in some neglected drawer. It is something that he ought to have considered some time ago; it is something that Samantha might have considered already. He begins in the living room, carefully opening the drawers of Teena's small writing desk. The grandfather clock ticks out its vigilant note, measuring the night into seconds. The buzz of the cicadas has subsided into a faint, distant whir.

Teena's bank statements are all in order, a healthy balance disturbed by no disproportionate withdrawals; she has been invited to a wedding in September, at the Old South Church in Boston; she buys her notecards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Searching further, he finds a recently prepared will and is concerned until he thinks of Teena, remembering how she began a college fund for Fox before the boy was even born. A fund, truncated after twelve years, that eventually supported Samantha through her doctorate. The will is simple, leaving token amounts to various worthy causes--token, that is, in comparison to the size of the estate--and the remainder to Samantha Ann Mulder.

He wonders whether he ought to consider preparing a will. He has money as he needs it, a fund upon which he can draw at will, but he has long moved past anything so quotidian as a bank account or a stock portfolio. He doubts that his colleagues at the Syndicate would make willing executors, for all their own wealth. Even leaving a last testament could, in his case, leave too much exposed to public view. C.G.B. Spender ceased to exist in the seventies, and Charles was not the name on his birth certificate even then. He has no identity certain enough upon which to rest a signature these days, and he has no one to whom he could plausibly leave the fruits of his evanescent life.

Even this house has been left untouched by his presence. It is silent, bearing no marks of the iniquities that were once perpetrated here. In fact he is not sure what he would expect to find. Only in novels would a woman like Teena Mulder keep a diary. And even in those days he was far too careful to leave anything behind.

Except for Samantha, of course.

He takes a seat on the couch, resting his feet after a moment's thought on the sturdy oak coffee table. On a shelf underneath the table are the family photo albums, neatly labeled and free of dust, although he can't imagine that she looks at them often. Selecting one, he settles back with it. A small lamp at his right hand provides the illumination.

It is the oldest of the albums, its pages stiff and interleaved with tissue paper. Couples in antique wedding clothes, their sepia likenesses fading into the anonymity of history. He lights a cigarette and with clumsy fingers turns over several pages at once, searching for something that he can recognize.

In the next photograph Teena is lying in bed in the hospital, exhausted and jubilant, her newborn son in her arms. The day he remembers clearly, standing with Bill in the brilliant light of a desolate salt flat in Nevada, trying to light cigars as the wind whipped around them. Teena's aunt had sent a telegram. When Bill returned to the East Coast three weeks later, sick at heart and railing against the world into which he had just brought a son, his best friend went with him.

They arrived at South Station tired and dusty from three days of train travel; stinking of cigarettes and whisky; bringing back nothing but the memory of wide open spaces and of endless card games, and the certainty that in fifty years the world would be irrevocably changed. Bill carried an autograph from Scott Crossfield signed "To Fox," and wondered whether it would mean anything to the boy when he was grown.

And so for the first time he met Teena Mulder. A new mother, her breasts full with milk and the skin around her eyes dusky with fatigue, she served them dinner that first night on the Vineyard.

"Charles will be staying with us for a little while," said Bill simply. "Until he finds a place in D.C."

"Washington?" asked Teena, leaning forward to collect the salad plates. The mother-of-pearl buttons on her blouse caught the light of the chandelier.

"We're under the wing of the State Department now," said Bill. "For all the good that it'll do us, isn't that right Charles?"

Not that he worked for the State Department himself, but Bill couldn't be expected to know that. In reply he said nothing, just lit another cigarette. He was glad when the thin wail of a newborn took Teena away from the table during dessert. He wondered what Bill would say to his wife in bed that night, privately, without him to overhear. He always wondered how much Teena knew. He still does.

He can remember the first time like it was yesterday. In 1961, not so many weeks after he met her for the first time. Not so many weeks after Fox was born. He, the uninvited guest, smoking cigarettes outside the kitchen door and going for long walks around the island, making himself as quiet and scarce as he knew how; she, the young wife of his best friend, pretty and tired and full of so much more than she was telling. He watched her around the house, doing all of the small unremarkable things that housewives do, and was fascinated for reasons that he could not quite discern. If she felt a similar fascination, she did a much better job of hiding it. But then, Teena was good at hiding so many things. It was one of the reasons why he loved her.

It was only a matter of time before it was over. As the demands of the project grew more pressing, his visits to the Vineyard became less frequent; Teena's increasing hesitancy held him at arm's length even when he was present. When, years later, she finally spoke of calling an end to their liaison, he accepted the fact with philosophical grace. The end had already come, unremarked by either of them. Time passes. Nothing lasts forever. Everything dies. Yet he still wishes that he could remember the last time that they slept together.

His thoughts are interrupted by the creak of her footsteps on the stairs, and he turns to find her poised on the bottom step.

"I thought I'd find you here," she says chidingly. "You never could sleep."

She comes closer, rests a hand on his shoulder and bends to see what he is holding in his lap. He feels her hand tense slightly as she sees the photograph album. It is open to a picture from the early sixties, Teena sitting on the beach wearing a deep red bathing suit. She is squinting into the sun, one hand held up to shade her face. The colors are vivid and grainy. Innocuous, banal, a family snapshot. Except that he remembers taking the picture.

"I had hoped that we could put the past behind us," he says, "for one night at least. But it seems that it finds me everywhere."

"It will do that if you keep looking for it."

She steps between the sofa and coffee table, the hem of her nightgown brushing over his bare feet as she passes. She takes a seat on the sofa next to him, careful, her hands folded in her lap. And yet she is close to him, so close, closer by far than when they talked over coffee.

"Charles," she says, "what *are* you looking for?"

"I don't know," he admits.

When he turns to look at her, her face is tipped towards him, her hazel eyes warm in the low light from the lamp. A corner of her mouth quirks upward in a half-smile. The answer is not so far away.

With a whisper of in-drawn breath, she leans forward. He meets her halfway, hand tangled in her hair, wanting to say her name but consumed by the softness of her lips against his. Teena's skin is hot under his hands, through the thin cotton of her nightgown. His hand slides down to her shoulder, drawing her closer, and then down further still to the curve of her waist. Against his mouth she is making soft noises of pleasure, soft familiar noises that blend with the hum of the cicadas outside, the sound of the Vineyard night. He moves his hand again, to her left breast, cupping it gently until it overflows the curve of his palm.

Finally, reluctantly, he breaks the kiss, wanting to whisper her name against her cheek. But Teena speaks first.

"Charles," she says quietly. "You don't have to."

"But I want to, Teena. Can't you tell that?"

And it seems she can. She leans towards him again and this time she touches him, her hands resting against his chest as if she can absorb some strength from the contact. He kisses her with open mouth, wanting to taste her, to breathe her in as he would inhale the smoke from a cigarette.

When he pulls away again, his movement is deliberate and slow.

"Shall we?" he says.

Teena nods, once. She gets to her feet without a word, and he follows her upstairs.

***

In the morning there is the blinding brightness of sunlight through the curtains. There is the smell of the sea and a faint, fresh perfume, and for a moment as his eyes open he grasps uneasily for his memories of the previous night. He doesn't wonder long.

He sits up. Beside him Teena is still peacefully asleep, lying on her back with one arm flung out, her hand trailing half off the edge of the bed. In the clear light of day he would have thought she would look older, but in fact she looks younger. Her face is relaxed and untroubled, the lines of care smoothed away by sleep. A half smile plays across her lips.

The clock on the bedside table reads 6:41. Not even time to smoke a cigarette in bed; not even time to reflect. It is just as well. This is more difficult than he had expected.

Swinging his legs to the edge of the bed, he leans over to retrieve his boxer shorts from the polished wood floor. Teena stirs slightly in her sleep, makes a questioning sound. He turns to her just as her eyes flutter open. They are so blue, a clear color utterly unlike the sea.

"It's all right, Teena," he says. He reaches out a hand to gently smooth her hair back. "You don't have to get up. Just go back to sleep."

"Is it morning already?" she says faintly, blinking against the glare.

"Go back to sleep," he repeats. "Don't get up; I'd rather not have to say goodbye."

And then he leans over her, ignoring the ache in his lower back, and kisses her forehead. Lingering only for a moment. When he pulls away, he sees that she has let her eyes fall closed again.

***

Ten minutes later he is standing outside the house, smoking the first cigarette of the day. He has left just as he came, with nothing but the clothes on his back. The sun is already warm, but his shirt is so wrinkled that he can't bring himself to take his jacket off. If Teena were not still in bed she would have ironed it for him. In the old days he might have borrowed a shirt of Bill's, and for the rest of the day felt the slight smugness that one feels after slipping into the life of another man.

A woman is out walking her dogs--two golden retrievers pulling impatiently at their leashes. She gives him a politely curious glance as she passes, and he knows how odd he must look. A well-dressed man standing out by the curb on a quiet street first thing in the morning, smoking a cigarette as if for all the world he belongs there.

At exactly seven o'clock the taxi pulls up outside the house.

"No," he says in response to the driver's questioning glance. "No luggage."

He drops his cigarette onto the cracked sidewalk, grinds it out with his heel. Then he climbs into the car, feeling the icy blast of the air conditioning. The radio is tuned to National Public Radio, and on the morning news they are discussing the discovery of life on Mars. Life fossilized in a meteorite, that is.

He is just beginning to smile to himself when the car starts to move. Instinctively he looks up towards the house. In the left dormer window--Samantha's window--he can see the curtains move ever so slightly. It isn't the wind. He forces himself to look away again.

The old saying is true. You can never go home again, especially if the home wasn't yours to begin with. Still, you can visit from time to time, and he supposes that's enough. It will have to be.


End file.
